Call Box: Old Continental Can plant made cans for juice and beer

Sandy.Strickland@jacksonville.com Continental Can Co. occupied this 1920s industrial building at 801 W. 15th St. along Fairfax Street in Northwest Jacksonville from 1930 to 1943. Its expansive windows have all been removed.

Dear Call Box: Please help me to find the location and ownership history of Continental Can Co., a manufacturing plant that operated in Jacksonville from the 1930s to about 1947. It made soldered cans for single-strength juice. Continental ran it during the citrus season, from November to May. Then Continental shut the plant down, and the employees went to Roanoke, Va., to make cans for vegetables from June to October. Some came down to Tampa, and that’s how I found out that there was a plant in Jacksonville. I worked at the Tampa plant for seven years and in the Chicago area for 35 years before retiring.

CVM, Kingsland, Ga.

Dear CVM: We could find little on the Internet about Continental’s Jacksonville operations. We did see a mention that Continental opened a plant here in 1930. A search of old city directories revealed that the plant was at 801 W. 15th St. along Fairfax Street in Northwest Jacksonville. By 1943, Continental’s address was listed as 108 W. Forsyth St. and in 1944 as 110 W. Forsyth. It evidently closed in 1946. Since the Forsyth address is downtown, you speculated in a subsequent conversation that it could have been a sales office.

We found Metro Jacksonville’s website and an article written by Ennis Davis, an urban planner and one of the website’s founders. The building was constructed in 1921 for the American Motors Export Co. to manufacture the Innes automobile. With the death of its president, Henry Innes, the company was purchased by Continental for $100,000. Davis wrote that the Jacksonville operation supplied the nearby Jacksonville Brewing Co. with aluminum cans for Jax Beer products.

Howard Feed Mills bought the building during World War II. In 1980, the 12-acre site was taken over by Wood Treaters LLC, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added the property to its National Priorities List, commonly called the Superfund, in 2012. EPA’s website says enforcement efforts are underway at the site.

The building is featured in historian Wayne Wood’s book, “Jacksonville’s Architectural Heritage.” Wood writes that “the elaborate facade and large size made this early 1920s industrial building somewhat of a curiosity.” The expansive panels of windows along its sides and the 370-foot-long clerestory bathed the interior with natural light and ventilation, he wrote. All windows have since been removed.

As for Continental, we can’t vouch for its operation schedule. The company was founded in 1904 by Edwin Norton and T.G. Cranwell and was the nation’s second leading metal can maker for much of the 20th century. By the mid-1930s, it had 38 plants nationwide with its main factories in Chicago and Syracuse, N.Y., where it was headquartered, according to the Encyclopedia’s Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses. By the early 1970s, annual sales reached $2 billion, and it was ranked as the top U.S. can manufacturer.

Continental produced its last can in Florida in 1987 when its Orange County packaging plant closed. In subsequent years, it was dispersed among other companies.

Dear Call Box: When is the Bass Pro store going to open?

R.D.

Dear R.D.: You’ll have to wait a while for the store planned for northern St. Johns County to open. As the Times-Union reported in May, it’s still in the design stage, and a spokeswoman could not say when construction would begin on the site near Florida 9B and Interstate 95. Originally, it was supposed to open early this year. But opening is planned for late 2015 or early 2016, the Times-Union’s Roger Bull reported.

Update: The mystery of the Big Five’s name is solved. Carolyn Bergeron called to say that her father, Carl Brooks, owned the restaurant from the 1950s to 1973. Its name was derived from its five food specials — hamburgers, fried chicken, shrimp, barbecue and steak burgers. It was already called The Big Five when her father bought the business, though he leased, rather than owned, the building, she said.

Her taste buds still remember the milk shakes and the No. 4 special, a “delicious” steak burger sandwich and french fries. Though the steak burger came on a big roll, it was so large that it hung over the sides, Bergeron said. It came with lettuce, tomato and other accompaniments and cost 50 cents.

The Big Five, which is at 1001 N. Main St., looked a little different than its later incarnations, she said. Patrons would park in the back for service and could enter the back lot through Phelps Street. There was a window on the side where the outdoor seating area is now. The waitresses came to the cars to take orders, went to the window to place them and pick up the food trays. Her father, who died about 12 years ago, got out of the business in 1973.